March 27th!

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This is our first blog entry in quite a while....and we're back!

The reason for this quiet period is simple: we've been hibernating.

During this time, we've had a lot of people ask when will the Tea Room open again for the season. Well, the date has now been set: March 27th.

This is a bit later than expected. But during this relatively mild Winter, we've not stopped any of our major projects. This year, this has involved finishing the first floor of the barn. Basically insulating it all and extending our kitchen/production area. With some of our wall covering on back order, we simply could not finish it all in time for our originally planned 21st March seasonal opening.

The back of the barn's first floor: in its original configuration

The back of the barn: a new and improved production area

Meanwhile, the Winter months have allowed us to continue experimentation in wine making and fruit liqueurs. The focus of our work has been the Kiwi berries we harvested last Fall. We continue to work on Melomels (a fruit-based Mead or Honey wine). The results have been quite good and we've now perfected the clarification of our wines.

In the end, the process is rather simple and involves just 4 basic ingredients: fruit, honey, water and yeast.

Kiwi berries drenched in Honey

Once water is added, the activated yeast does all the work

Within just a few weeks, our fermenter is ready to disgorge a beautiful dry white wine

Finally, quite a few changes are expected in this year's Tea Room operation. We hope our patrons will benefit from all these changes. In any case, we now are looking forward to a great new season and the blog is now back on, full swing with weekly updates.